I will be on Fox this morning at about 10:20am ET (7:20am PT) to discuss Sea-Tac airport taking down Christmas trees in order to avoid putting up an 8-foot menorah. A Rabbi said he would sue unless the menorah was put up, and so the airport decided to take the tress down instead.
This story was first reported as the trees were taken down simply because “member of the community complained.” Now the complete story is out.
Airport’s trees stoking “war on Christmas”
The departure of Christmas tree displays at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport — the Port of Seattle’s response to a local rabbi’s insistence that an electric menorah also be put up — is accelerating into an international spectacle in the so-called “war on Christmas.”
And that is not what Rabbi Elazar Bogomilsky wanted.
“I am devastated, shocked and appalled at the decision that the Port of Seattle came to,” he said Sunday. As news coverage about the airport’s trees spread from CNN to ABC to the Paris-based International Herald Tribune, Bogomilsky on Sunday began to receive hateful messages from people holding him responsible for the removal of the trees.
The rabbi should have simply asked, and not threatened to sue. I have no problem at all with the idea of a menorah going up, but the bottom line is, 95 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. This gorwing obsession with everyone everywhere needing to see their representation is the impact of narcissism and its increasing control of people’s lives.
Now the rabbi should withdraw his suit and ask that the Christmas trees be put back up. Instead, he’s making the talk show circuit. So in a way, he got his way–everything now is about him.
“What we have are holiday trees,” [an airport representative] said. “If we are going to display symbols representing other cultures, we have to think what that means and what’s respectful and what would make a good display. Maybe it would be ‘Holidays of the World.’
“Or maybe it’s snowmen.”
Holidays of the World. Really, there is only one major holiday in December, and that would be, uh, “Snowman Day.”
